Don’t Panic

To quote the late great Douglas Adams, “Don’t Panic.” As the cover of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy clearly states, staying calm is essential.

So now that the “end of life” deadline for Windows XP and Office 2003 has come and gone, it still seems that there are some of you out there that have not made any plans. Indeed, there are even some writers out there that have suggested that XP can extend its life as an open source software option!

But, for the rest of us it would seem that if you are not finishing your migration at this point the deadline has come – and gone. So what do you do now? Well something would be better than nothing. First would be to put together a plan and expedite that as soon as possible.

We know that many organizations just don’t have the resources to do this on their own, upgrading the OS and Office suite as well as migrating all the important files is not something that happens every day of the week. Most organizations would eat their profits alive if they staffed that way.

So it would appear that you will need some outside help. There is certainly no shortage of consulting service organizations that can help with the OS and Office deployments. Of course there are other considerations that these teams may be able to help you with, things to consider:

Verify that all your systems can be upgraded and if not, plan for replacement.

Verify that all the applications you rely on are available and compatible with the new system.

Training. It’s a brand new interface and staff will need training.

Data migration. The new versions of Office will impact the files you use for business. You need to plan for any problems with the data files.

Finally a plan to bring it all together. No one makes the upgrade overnight. You will need to verify that the plan works for a small group of users then expand that to the whole organization.

As I said at the beginning “Don’t Panic.” Well maybe panic a little and channel that panic into actions.